Five capabilities, each delivered by named programs across the four domains and the fleet-conversion line. Nothing in the fleet transmits by radio and nothing guides on a link. Every program opens to its page.
A capability on this page is not an adjective. It is a set of programs, each with a fixed designation, a domain and a page a reader can open.
Five capabilities run across the enterprise. Each one is delivered by named programs across Air, Ground, Water and Underground, and across the conversion line, which puts the same doctrine into the machines a customer already owns.
Each capability names its programs, and each program carries a fixed designation. Goose CS-110 means a single round on a single launch chain, with one page behind it. For a converted machine the family is the public unit, and the configuration record for each machine sits behind it with the engineering rather than on a web page.
Two rules run through all five. No radio and no GPS in any Canadian Shield design: nothing in the fleet transmits by radio, and nothing guides on a link. Carriers, not munitions: no warhead, no fuze, no energetic material, and nothing that operates a weapon.
The planner proposes and sequences tasks, evaluates perception and reads task progress. It cannot energize an actuator or grant itself safety authority. A qualified human approves the operating envelope, the task and the intervention rules, and an independent safety layer can remove motion energy without asking the software above it.
Operation without a radiated command link and without GNSS in the guidance loop. The capability is stated as what continues, dependency by dependency.
Three guidance tiers carry every platform: preset at the dock, fibre-tethered with a person in the loop, or onboard optical-AI behind a policy gate. None of the three needs a radiated command link, and none of them puts GNSS in the guidance loop. Jammed RF and denied GPS are the default here, not the edge case.
The lead round makes the point in material form. Goose CS-110 flies with no battery, no motor and no onboard guidance electronics. CS-120 is the powered interceptor on the same launch chain. Under ground, the CS-410 family runs the same rule.
Network structure carries the rest. Machine-control and safety networks stay segregated from service and mission networks, and external link loss or compromise cannot create actuator authority.
| Absent by design | What the fleet does instead | The tier |
|---|---|---|
| GNSS receiver | There is none. A bounded local task runs on onboard and local localization. | Preset · fibre · onboard optical-AI |
| Radio command link | There is none. Nothing in the fleet transmits by radio and nothing guides on a link; the local machine task does not require continuous command. | Preset · onboard optical-AI |
| Cloud | Mission runtime and safety functions execute locally. | Offline-first autonomy |
| External map | Local perception builds a task-relevant representation. | Local mapping capability |
| Foreign service | A supported release can operate and recover locally. | No mandatory foreign cloud dependency |
| The fibre tether | The one link is fibre, under the tether tier only. Loss ends in a defined stop or degrade, never in uncontrolled continuation. | Fibre-tethered (Tier 2) |
Programs: Goose CS-110 · CS-120 · the Underground family.
Technology carries the guidance doctrine and the authority order across all four domains.
CDNS Autonomy converts selected existing machines into optionally uncrewed assets through their own controls. Responder CS-810 for emergency services, Defender CS-820 for defence engineering.
The unit sits on the operator's seat under the machine's own lap belt. It works the joysticks, levers, pedals and switches the manufacturer fitted, reads the dash with a camera, and lifts back out. Nothing is cut, no harness is tapped and no controller is flashed. It never connects to the machine's CAN bus, ECU or firmware, and the only wire is a fused accessory feed. On removal the operator station is returned to baseline and inspected.
The proposition is machine-specific rather than universal. Each machine is surveyed, fitted with its own kit, calibrated and recorded, and the supported list grows one qualified configuration at a time. The same fleet serves crewed and uncrewed work, because the seat is still a seat.
The kit is engineered around six interface families: dual-axis hand control, rotary control, linear foot control, discrete control, instrument observation and dynamic-state sensing. Reference iron for the group's own conversions is the 290G, the D6T and the 930.
Fire ground, structural collapse, hazmat, flood and wildfire earthworks, and rubble and route clearance for civil agencies. In a burning structure, stopping and waiting for a person can itself be the harm, so each task carries its own minimum-risk condition.
Defender takes the seat for earthworks, berms and revetments, obstacle reduction, route and rubble clearance, remote handling and driving, on the ground and the machines defence engineering already runs, military-pattern vehicles included — each surveyed, fitted, calibrated and recorded like any other machine. Never operates a weapon. Never fires anything.
One hardware family, programmed apart. The tasks each profile may run, the movement space it may use and the safe state it goes to when something falls outside the rules are decided per task, in advance, never in the moment. Authorization is time-limited, signed and withdrawable, and the physical stop and the manual release on every actuator always remain.
Seven conversion families carry the work. DFC-E Engineering Plant covers excavators, dozers, loaders, graders and related equipment, for hazardous earthworks, debris, fortification and route or airfield support. DFC-L Logistics and Handling covers forklifts, telehandlers, material handlers and yard equipment, for remote depots and hazardous handling. DFC-T Terrain and Base Support covers tractors and implement carriers, for firebreaks, snow and terrain maintenance. DFC-S Specialty Support covers customer-defined families, with the specific conversion subject to engineering survey. DFC-V Tactical and Utility Vehicles, DFC-H Heavy Logistics Trucks and DFC-P Protected Mobility carry the wheeled side, described by their controls and the work they do. The Machines page carries all seven.
Three lines of buyer value sit behind them. People move away from hazardous machine tasks. Capital stock is preserved and the capability path shortens. Dependence on continuous wide-area communications drops. CDNS Autonomy carries the line in full, machine by machine.
Earthworks, berms and revetments, obstacle reduction, route and rubble clearance, boring and tunnel reconnaissance.
The defence focus is support and engineering work, where autonomy removes personnel from machine exposure rather than creating autonomous lethal effects. The task list follows from that: hazardous earthmoving and excavation; damaged-infrastructure and debris removal; airfield and route-support engineering; remote or contaminated material handling; work in fire, heat, smoke, dust and chemical exposure where permitted; base construction, snow and ice management and terrain maintenance; underground or confined-support tasks after machine-specific hazard analysis; and recovery support and site remediation.
Below ground the CS-410 drill goes down the hole instead of the soldier, in air-drop, skid and trailer configurations, with Aquifer CS-411 and CS-425 behind it. The underground work sits on thirty years of directional-drilling heritage.
On a customer's own plant the same tasks are done by Defender CS-820, through the machine's own controls, on machines the customer has already bought and already maintains. The Underground family carries the programs.
Remote depots and hazardous stores are a fleet problem before they are an autonomy problem, and the fleet is already standing in the yard.
This one arrives as a conversion rather than as new iron. The forklifts, telehandlers, material handlers and yard equipment are already standing in the depot, and the DFC-L family takes the seat of the ones a remote or hazardous job would otherwise put a person on.
Passive, RF-silent sensing at sea and under ground. No emitter, no designator.
CS-310 works the water, one of two moulded low-signature platforms in the fleet's youngest domain. Under ground, CS-430 and the Trembler Line CS-435 carry buried sensing.
Every one of them is receive-only. There is no emitter and no designator, and the record returns by fibre or on recovery rather than over a link. The rest of the fleet runs on that rule; sensing is the one job where a transmitter would otherwise be assumed, and it does not get one.
Water family carries the water programs, and Underground family the underground ones.
One table across the five. Domains are Air, Ground, Water and Underground; the conversion line sits beside them and runs on plant a customer already owns.
| Capability | Where it runs | Programs |
|---|---|---|
| Denied-environment autonomy | Air · Ground · Underground | KAOS Core CS-270 · Goose CS-110 · CS-120 · the Underground family |
| Legacy-fleet autonomy | CDNS Autonomy | Responder CS-810 · Defender CS-820 |
| Engineering support | Ground · Underground · CDNS Autonomy | KAOS Core CS-270 · CS-410 · Aquifer CS-411 · CS-425 · Defender CS-820 |
| Resilient logistics | Ground · CDNS Autonomy | KAOS Core CS-270 · Defender CS-820 |
| Sensing and ISR | Water · Underground | CS-310 · CS-430 · Trembler Line CS-435 |
Designations are fixed. Every program opens to its page.
Programs appear in more than one row. One chassis philosophy runs across the four domains, and one removable operator runs across the machines a customer already owns. A planner reading down the first column is reading capabilities; reading across a row gives the iron that delivers one.
A planner rarely buys one of these on its own. On a working site they run together, and they are engineered to.
Take a route that has to be opened. Sensing goes first and returns its record by fibre or on recovery, with nothing transmitted from the ground. Carriers move stores forward on one fibre trunk. Engineering plant cuts and clears, above ground and below it. Where the customer already owns the plant, CDNS Autonomy puts the operator into their machines instead of shipping new ones.
The five capabilities share the same doctrine and the same authority order, whether they run on Canadian Shield platforms or on a customer's own. Mission runtime and safety functions execute locally. Local perception builds a task-relevant representation without an external map. A supported release can operate and recover locally, and loss of a remote operator link causes a defined stop or degrade rather than uncontrolled continuation.
Segregation is what makes the combination safe to wire together. External command talks to a mission gateway in high-level task vocabulary: tasks, areas, priorities and supervisory actions, translated into an approved local vocabulary and nothing wider. Machine-control and safety networks stay segregated from service and mission networks, and no external system is granted actuator authority at any point.
A planner reading this page is sizing a program rather than a product. What the five capabilities cover, and where each of them stops, is worth settling before an enquiry rather than after one.
The fence holds in every direction. The product proposition is not that AI drives any machine. What is offered is a named program against a named task, on a machine that has been surveyed, calibrated and recorded, with the safe state written before the work starts.
The useful first message is the capability a planner has to stand up, and the ground it has to work on.
Tell us the task, the domain, and whether the plant is ours or yours. The reply names the programs that carry it, what a conversion survey would cover if the machines are already in your fleet, and what a screened enquiry gets back.
Every enquiry is screened before any discussion, and the export posture is counsel-first, with permits issued per shipment. Procurement sets out how access escalates from a public page to a controlled brief. CDNS Autonomy carries the conversion line and Technology carries the guidance doctrine. The family pages carry the programs themselves: Goose, CS-310 and CS-410.
Nothing on this page is an offer, a commitment or a representation to any government body, and this site carries no prices.
